Used game competitors no threat to GameStop

Retailer now plans to capitalise on trade-ins of UMD PSP games

GameStop has said that the entry of competitors such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart into the used games market has had no "meaningful impact" on its own second-hand sales.

Yesterday, the company said that used games were a bright spot in an otherwise disappointing quarter, growing 19 per cent compared to last year and accounting for 32 per cent of sales.

"We follow very closely every single location where competitors are involved in trades," detailed Julian Paul Raines, COO of GameStop. "So on all of these latest competitor tests, we have not really seen any meaningful impact from those.

"Certainly we will continue to watch that and we just continue to try to get better and better at using that currency but have not seen any impact yet competitively from those."

And with the launch of the new digital PSPgo, GameStop said that it saw an opportunity to capitalise on consumers trading in their old UMD titles which will no longer work on the new handheld.

"It will be a strong contributor to our trade-in process where you have people that will have UMD games that will no longer work on that platform that will fuel additional currency for GameStop," commented Tony Bartel, executive VP for GameStop.

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